Recent local-level initiatives suggest that the key to a peaceful resolution of the conflict may reside in Colombia's towns and municipalities. Arecent article in The Washington Post describes Colombia as "the Bosnia of South America."I "Colombians are on the verge," says The Economist, "of annihilating themselves." 2 This bleak view of Colombia from abroad is no exaggeration. It corresponds to the reality of a country on the brink of the abyss, ripped apart by decades of violence. The statistics of the current bloodbath are particularly chilling. In the decade between 1987 and 1997, 277,143 people were assassinated. In the first 11 months of 1997, 23,532 people were killed-an average of 70 people murdered each day. 3 With a total of 185 politi- cally motivated massacres in 1997 alone, Colombia has been singled out by international human rights groups as one of the worst violators of human rights on the planet. 4 Indeed, the country is in the throes of an all-out war, trapped between barbarity and the empty rhetoric of an autistic political class. How to bring about peace is the question that dogs Colombian politics today. The country's national lead- ers seem unable to confront the current crisis, respond- ing to the dramatic expansion of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with more vio- lence and brutality. The FARC has gained muscle at the local level, as it demonstrated with its boycott of the municipal elections held last October. The boycott effectively prevented elections from being held in numerous districts in south- ern and eastern Colombia, where the FARC has histori- cally been strong. At the same time, however, the FARC was not able to stop elections from taking place in other parts of the country, revealing the limits of the guerrilla's tactics and its inability to project its growing military might into political power at the national level. In response to this upsurge of the guerrilla, the coun- try's political leaders have turned to the army and its paramilitary allies. In the past year, paramilitary groups have become more aggressive, spreading their reign of terror throughout the Colombian countryside. The ensu- ing slaughter, dislocation and persecution of broad sec- tors of the population reveal a country deeply mired in the worst crisis in its history. At the crossroads of this impasse, local and regional leaders, along with important sectors of civil society, are trying to find ways to bring an end to the violence, suggesting that perhaps the key to a peaceful resolution of the conflict may reside in Colombia's towns and municipalities. ver the past two years, the FARC has intensified its campaign to expand its local and regional influence, establishing a solid presence in over half of Colombia's municipalities. 5 In the regions that it controls, the FARC has been following a strategy ana- lysts have dubbed "armed clientelism." The guerrilla exerts pressure on local mayors to invest in projects that benefit specific communities in order to strengthen its base of support among the rural population. Partially as an extension of this strategy, the FARC has created a new clandestine political party, the Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, which actively co-gov- erns in areas of guerrilla influence. The guerrilla's strategy of boycotting the elections seems to contradict the FARC's previous stance on local- level politics. On the one hand, decentralization was a key FARC demand in its negotiations for a cease-fire with the government in 1983, and it strongly supported reforms that allowed for the election of mayors and gov- ernors, passed by the central government in 1986 and 1988 respectively. 6 Last year's boycott, on the other hand, was a clear-cut attempt on the part of the FARC to undermine the very local-level institutions which the group had demanded in the 1980s. This strategic reversal came about when the FARC realized that the consolida- tion of local and municipal political institutions bestowed legitimacy on the state with which it is at war. By boycotting the elections, the FARC sought to under- mine any and all sources of democratic legitimacy that the Colombian state may have at the local level. NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Arturo Alape is a writer, historian and artist. He has published several books, including El Bogotazo: Memorias del olvido (Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1983) and Ciudad Bolivar: La hoguera de las ilusiones (Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1995). Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA A cemetery in Apartado, in the northern province of UrabJ. n the zones of FARC influence, many local and regional leaders have come to realize that in order to govern, they must come to terms with the guerrillas. The newly elected governor of the department of Valle, Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazibal, revealed in an interview how this process worked when he was mayor of Tuldia, also in Valle. 7 As mayor, Alvarez Gardeazibal says that he quickly realized that the guerrillas controlled 23 of the 26 districts in the area. "I realized three things," he said. "First, that the guerrillas had replaced the state in these areas. Second, that I was forbidden by law to estab- lish contact with them. And third, that the insurgents could establish contact with the mayor via the peasants." Alvarez Gardeazibal pursued local-level negotiations with the guerrilla by establishing talks with peasant groups in the region. Through these liasons, the FARC agreed to abide by a pact of nonagression. "The guerrilla made a commitment to refrain from attacks on police outposts and peasants," he said. "And the local govern- ment promised to take into account their suggestions for the areas under their control." As a result, programs sug- gested by the guerrillas, such as the construction of new roads and other public-works projects, were imple- mented by the local government. Alvarez Gardeazdbal has continued this policy as gov- ernor of Valle. National leaders initially saw such local- level negotiations as a violation of the law. But, accord- ing to the governor, the attorney general's office conducted an investigation of his peace initiative in Tulia and found no irregularities, and since then, the government has reversed course and allowed regional and local dialogues with the guerrilla. "I believe this is a viable micromodel," says Alvarez Gardeazibal, "that can be repeated without compromising local authority and without breaking the law." 8 In this context, the importance of the Mandate for Peace-an initiative of broad sectors of civil society that was approved by more than ten million voters last October-becomes clear. The Mandate calls for the armed actors to declare a cease-fire and begin peace talks. It also calls for the combatants to respect a humanitarian accord protecting the civilian population and to refrain from killing, kidnapping, forcibly disap- pearing or displacing people, and involving minors in the conflict. With this initiative, civil society broke out of the resignation and indifference that has allowed vio- lence in Colombia to persist for so many years. The Mandate for Peace and initiatives like that of Governor Alvarez Gardeazdbal offer hope that alternative routes to peace may be emerging from local and regional community leaders. The Mandate for Peace must now become the basis for the active participation of civil society in establishing the conditions for negotiations with the many armed groups operating in the country. Otherwise, it will become yet another frustrated attempt to bring peace to Colombia. The Possibilities for Peace 1. Robert Weiner and Ana Carrigan, "As Its Civil War Intensifies, Colombia Emerges as the Bosnia of South America," The Washington Post, August 17, 1997, p. C5. 2. As cited in El Tiempo (Bogota), August 24, 1997. 3. Human Rights Watch/Americas, Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996), p. 15. 4. Statistics provided by Colombia's Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. 5. Jos6 No6 Rios and Daniel Garcia-Peha, Building Tomorrow's Peace: A Stategy for National Reconciliation, Report by the Peace Exploration Committee (Bogota), September 9, 1997, p. 7. 6. Jacobo Arenas, Correspondencia secreta del proceso de paz (Bogot6: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1989), p. 70. 7. "Le Ileg6 el turno para demostrar si tenia raz6n o no," El Tiempo (Bogota), November 4, 1997, p. 8. 8. "Le lleg6 el turno para demostrar si tenia raz6n o no."
